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How can I define a column of a table to contain lstlistings?

The background is that I want to write my own cheat sheet for Haskell, in which I have mainly tabular environments that contain the keywords and a short explanation.

A first very naive attempt, which compiles just fine, looks like this:

\documentclass{article} \usepackage{xcolor} \definecolor{greencyan}{rgb}{0.5, 1.0, 0.83} \definecolor{marine}{rgb}{0.0, 0.5, 1.0} \definecolor{firebrick}{rgb}{0.7, 0.13, 0.13} \usepackage{listings} \lstset{ language=haskell, basicstyle=\ttfamily, commentstyle=\color{gray}\textit, keywordstyle=\color{firebrick}, numberstyle=\color{marine}, stringstyle=\color{greencyan}, breaklines=true } \usepackage{array} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{ll} \lstinline$[] $ & empty list initiation \\ \lstinline$++ $ & list concatenation \\ \lstinline$x:list $ & prepend x to list \\ \lstinline$head list$ & first element of a list \\ \lstinline$tail list$ & all but first element of a list \\ \lstinline$init list$ & last element of a list \\ \lstinline$last list$ & all but last element of a list \\ \end{tabular} \end{document}

It his however quite tedious to always make a \lstinline$<code>$ in every second cell of the whole document, and since the array package allows me to use the math environment in tables via \newcolumntype{m}{>{$}l<{$}} I thought it might be useful to define myself a columntype for source code like so:

\documentclass{article} ... % same as above, not necessary for the problem \usepackage{array} \newcolumntype{f}{>{\begin{lstlisting}}l<{\end{lstlisting}}} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{fl} [] & empty list initiation \\ ++ & list concatenation \\ head list & first element of a list \\ tail list & all but first element of a list \\ init list & last element of a list \\ last list & all but last element of a list \\ \end{tabular} \end{document}

Which throws a whopping 103 errors at me, starting with Missing \endcsname inserted. [ [] Wanting to use the lstlistings environment and not lstinline, for the upcoming multiline function definitions on the cheatsheet I tried to bring that environment inside a tabular cell like I did with the lstinline:

\documentclass{article} ... \usepackage{array} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{ll} \begin{lstlisting} [] \end{lstlisting}& empty list initiation \\ \begin{lstlisting} ++ \end{lstlisting}& list concatenation \\ \begin{lstlisting} head list \end{lstlisting}& first element of a list \\ \begin{lstlisting} tail list \end{lstlisting}& all but first element of a list \\ \begin{lstlisting} init list \end{lstlisting}& last element of a list \\ \begin{lstlisting} last list \end{lstlisting}& all but last element of a list \\ \end{tabular} \end{document}

This gets me down to one error:

: TeX STOPPED: fatal errors occured. Check the TeX log file for details []

Checking the log file, I guess the relevant lines are the following, although I do not know how to fix that error.

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=5000]. \end #1->\csname end#1 \endcsname \@checkend {#1}\expandafter \endgroup \if@e... l.44 \begin{lstlisting} [] \end {lstlisting} & empty list initiatio... If you really absolutely need more capacity, you can ask a wizard to enlarge me.

Please note that the line numbers do not match with the MWE since I have one file in which I have all versions and can comment and uncomment them for testing purposes.

Which brought me to the point that maybe, although that would be a huge shame, the lstlistings environment does not work inside the tabular environment. So I tried to define a column to be a lstinline column:

\documentclass{article} ... % same as above, not necessary for the problem \usepackage{array} \newcolumntype{f}{>{\lstinline$}l<{$}} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{fl} [] & empty list initiation \\ ++ & list concatenation \\ head list & first element of a list \\ tail list & all but first element of a list \\ init list & last element of a list \\ last list & all but last element of a list \\ \end{tabular} \end{document}

One one hand, this would be a pain in the rear for multiline function definitions, while on the other hand I still get two errors from this:

Improper alphabetic consonant. [ [] mwe.tex: TeX STOPPED: File ended while scanning use of \lst@tem\ETC.[]

If you got this far, thanks for your kind attention. In addition to my question asked above and a fix for the cheat sheet, can anybody explain the behaviour that leads to all of these errors?

I guess it has something to do with the lstlistings environment and that it ignores most of the normal LaTeX commands, but I still don't get why only one option works while all others will fail.

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  • Well the problem is that lstlisting contains verbatim content. Do you really need syntax highlighting? Commented May 27, 2017 at 11:03
  • Depends on your definition of "really needing" something. At least I'd highly appreciate having Syntax highlighting for this as in my experience it often brings a huge amount of structure into the code, especially in a confusing language like Haskell. Commented May 27, 2017 at 11:14
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    Yeah well there's at least tex.stackexchange.com/questions/297210/…, tex.stackexchange.com/questions/207973/…, stackoverflow.com/questions/3220121/…. Especially the last is interesting. Commented May 27, 2017 at 11:18
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    as with any verbatim environment it turns off all standard processing so & does not end the table cell (imagine if your code had been C it would need & all over) so & is a normal character within the listing. verbatim environments just have special code to look for the end string which must be literally there, <{\end{lstlisting} relies on & meaning end of table cell and inserting that code but that is never going to happen here. Commented May 27, 2017 at 15:40
  • @DavidCarlisle thanks for your answer, which at least clarified why I can't have easy-going code-columns (at least not without major trickery aka rewriting a lot of code that already exists). Do you also know why the \begin{} \end{} syntax fails inside a tabular cell? Commented May 27, 2017 at 16:14

2 Answers 2

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I can't judge how robust this solution is but using the collcell package and defining a new column

\newcolumntype{H}{>{\collectcell\lstinline}l<{\endcollectcell}}

seems to work at least for your MWE.

\documentclass{article} \usepackage{xcolor} \definecolor{greencyan}{rgb}{0.5, 1.0, 0.83} \definecolor{marine}{rgb}{0.0, 0.5, 1.0} \definecolor{firebrick}{rgb}{0.7, 0.13, 0.13} \usepackage{listings} \lstset{ language=haskell, basicstyle=\ttfamily, commentstyle=\color{gray}\textit, keywordstyle=\color{firebrick}, numberstyle=\color{marine}, stringstyle=\color{greencyan}, breaklines=true } \usepackage{array} \usepackage{collcell} \newcolumntype{H}{>{\collectcell\lstinline}l<{\endcollectcell}} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{Ll} [] & empty list initiation \\ ++ & list concatenation \\ x:list & prepend x to list \\ head list & first element of a list \\ tail list & all but first element of a list \\ init list & last element of a list \\ last list & all but last element of a list \end{tabular} \end{document}

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If structure is all you're after, you can just set the descriptions as \comments within an lstlisting environment:

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\documentclass{article} \usepackage{xcolor} \definecolor{greencyan}{rgb}{0.5, 1.0, 0.83} \definecolor{marine}{rgb}{0.0, 0.5, 1.0} \definecolor{firebrick}{rgb}{0.7, 0.13, 0.13} \usepackage{listings} \lstset{ language=haskell, basicstyle=\ttfamily, commentstyle=\color{gray}\textit, keywordstyle=\color{firebrick}, numberstyle=\color{marine}, stringstyle=\color{greencyan}, breaklines=true, mathescape } \newcommand{\comment}{\textrm} \begin{document} \begin{lstlisting} [] $\comment{empty list initiation}$ ++ $\comment{list concatenation}$ x:list $\comment{prepend x to list}$ head list $\comment{first element of a list}$ tail list $\comment{all but first element of a list}$ init list $\comment{last element of a list}$ last list $\comment{all but last element of a list}$ \end{lstlisting} \end{document}

Even line-breaking is not an issue:

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% ... \usepackage{makecell} \newcommand{\comment}[1]{\textrm{\makecell[tl]{#1}}} \begin{document} \begin{lstlisting} [] $\comment{empty list initiation}$ ++ $\comment{list concatenation}$ x:list $\comment{prepend x to list}$ head list $\comment{first element of a list}$ tail list $\comment{all but first element of a list}$ init list $\comment{last element of a list \\ and something below that}$ last list $\comment{all but last element of a list}$ \end{lstlisting} \end{document}
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